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Trojans Dominate Sunbelt’s Latest E-Threats Report

Security vendor Sunbelt announced top 10 prevailing malware threats for the November month on December 3, 2009.

The top slot has been acquired by Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, which accounted for nearly 20% (precisely 19.82%) of total global malware threats during the month. It is a downloader Trojan related with rogue security programs, also known as scareware, reports Sunbelt.

Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen has been ranked second, accounting for 6% of all threats. For past seven months (since April 2009), this Trojan had acquired top position in Sunbelt's list. It exploits system flaws to infiltrate into users' PCs to subsequently compromise their privacy. It is potential enough of getting on user's board completely unnoticed.

The third slot has been occupied by a new entry Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0, with 4.19% of detections. This Trojan is the common detection for password-stealing Trojan horse programs that implant keyloggers which trace keystrokes and forward the data to the malware operators who had distributed the malware.

With the infection rate of 2.19%, Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) holds the fourth rank. This malware performs interesting functions to damage users' systems. It seems that the files linked with system still exist, but the nasty virus has modified/added certain code to make the files look missing.

Trojan.Win32.Malware, with the infection rate of 2.6% ranks fifth on the list. To steal user's World of Warcraft (WoW) account name and password, hackers may use this Trojan.

On the sixth position is Trojan.ASF/Wimad with 2.32% infection rate, and includes malicious Windows Media files, which are capable of receiving instructions from a remote web server. Generally, they are developed or installed by another malware.

With the infection rate of 1.72%, BehavesLike.Win.32.Malware (v) has been placed seventh on the list. This malware is a heuristic detection for software exhibiting behaviours which are generally related to malicious threats.

Interestingly, six of the top 10 malware threats in the Sunbelt's list are Trojans. Commenting on this, Michael St. Neitzel, Vice President of Threat Research at Sunbelt Software, said that trojans are the favoured malware tactic used by cyber assailants to execute social engineering attacks, as reported by sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com on December 3, 2009.